Why are .thunderbird and .evolution hidden ?

[Marcel Rieux]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 1:58 AM, Ed Greshko <Ed.Greshko at greshko.com> wrote:

> Another way around it is to use the nautilus integration with k3b.
> Unlike k3b, nautilus has a selection for "view hidden files".  Then you
> can drag and drop precisely what you need from nautilus to k3b.

Ed, I'll let be honest. I sometimes can't help but to think of you as
some kind of hermit in his cave, asking all kind of superfluous
details and so on, but...

once again I must admit that this works :) You're helpful.

To answer pretty much all answers in this thread, I'll add that having
.thunderbird and .evolution hidden does not seem to me like a good
idea. Hidden files should be for configuration, not data. I suppose
that's why I have ~/Mail which, I suppose, was added there by default
for... I don't know, I suppose some not wysiwyg mail program such as
Pine. This is correct.

Hidden files will prevent newbies from deleting directories, but why
the hell should a user delete a directory named "Mail" if he doesn't
know its purpose?

OTOH, hiding the directory will end up in many users not backing it up.

IMO, still not a good idea.